(Bulletin ZNjumbeT Eight 



^Price ^Uhirty-five Cents 



CATALOGUE 
OF PLAY EQUIPMENT 



Compiled by 

Jean Lee Hunt 



Bureau of Educational Experiments 

16 West 8th Street, New York 
1918 



Gift 
Publisher 



A CATALOGUE 
OF PLAY EQUIPMENT 



Compiled by 

Jean Lee Hunt 




Bureau of Educational Experiments 

16 West 8th Street, New York 
1918 



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Introduction 

What are the requisites of a child's laboratory? What essentials 
must we provide if we would deliberately plan an environment to pro- 
mote the developmental possibilities of play? 

These questions are raised with ever-increasing insistence as the 
true nature of children's play and its educational significance come to 
be matters of more general knowledge and the selection of play equip- 
ment assumes a corresponding importance in the school and at home. 

To indicate some fundamental rules for the choice of furnishings 
and toys and to show a variety of materials illustrating the basis of 
selection has been our aim in compiling the following brief catalogue. 
We do not assume the list to be complete, nor has it been the inten- 
tion to recommend any make or pattern as being indispensable or as 
having an exclusive right to the field. On the contrary, it is our chief 
hope that the available number and variety of such materials may be 
increased to meet a corresponding increase of intelligent demand on the 
part of parents and teachers for equipment having real dignity and 
play value. 

The materials listed were originally assembled in the Exhibit of 
Toys and School Equipment shown by the Bureau of Educational Ex- 
periments in the Spring and Summer of 1917, and we wish to make 
acknowledgment, therefore, to the many who contributed to that ex- 
hibit and by so doing to the substance of the following pages. Chief 
among them are Teachers College, The University of Pittsburgh, The 
Ethical Culture School, The Play School and other experimental schools 
described in our bulletins, numbers 3, 4 and 5. 

The cuts have been chosen for the most part from photographs of 
the Play School, where conditions fairly approximate those obtainable 
in the home and thus offer suggestions easily translatable by parents 
into terms of their own home environment. 

While this equipment is especially applicable to the needs of chil- 
dren four, five and six years old, most of it will be found well adapted 
to the interests of children as old as eight years, and some of it to those 
of younger children as well. 

Bureau of Educational Experiments. 

New York City, June, 1918. 



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OUT^OF^DOOFk FURNISHINGS 

UT-OF-DOOBv Furnishings should be of a kind to encourage 
creative play as well as to give exercise. 



Playground apparatus, therefore, in addition to providing for big 
muscle development should combine the following requisites: 

Intrinsic value as a toy or plaything. "The play of children on 
it and with it must be spontaneous." * 

Adaptability to different kinds of play and exercise. "It must 
appeal to the imagination of the child so strongly that new 
forms of use must be constantly found by the child himself 
in using it." * 

Adaptability to individual or group use. It should lend itself to 
solitary play or to use by several players at once. 

Additional requisites are: 

Safety. Its use should be attended by a minimum of danger. 
Suitable design, proper proportions, sound materials and (Tare- 
ful construction are essentials. 

Durability. It must be made to withstand hard use and all kinds 
of weather. To demand a minimum of repair means also 
to afford a maximum of security. 

*Dr. E. H. Arnold, "Some Inexpensive Playground Apparatus." Bui. 27, Playground Association of America. 




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THE OUTDOOR LABORATORY 



In the country, ready-to-hand resources, trees for climbing, the five- 
barred fence, the pasture gate, the stone wall, the wood-pile, Mother 
Earth to dig in, furnish ideal equipment for the muscle development of 
little people and of their own nature afford the essential requisites for 
creative and dramatic play. To their surpassing fitness for "laboratory" 
purposes each new generation bears testimony. If the furnishings of a 
deliberately planned environment are to compare with them at all they 
must lend themselves to the same freedom of treatment. 

The apparatus shown here was made by a local carpenter, and could 
easily be constructed by high school pupils with the assistance of the 
manual training" teacher. 

The ground has been covered with a layer of fine screened gravely 
a particularly satisfactory treatment for very little children, as it is 
relatively clean and dries quickly after rain. It does not lend itself to 
the requirements of organized games, however, and so will not answer 
for children who have reached that stage of play development. 

A number of building bricks, wooden boxes of various sizes, pieces. 
of board and such "odd lumber" with a few tools and out-of-door toys 
complete the yard's equipment. 





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THE SWINGING ROPE 

Upright— 3" x 3" x 6'-9". 

Top Piece— 3" x 3" x 2'-9". 

Upright and top piece are mortised or halved and bolted together. 

Bracing at top (3" x 3" x 20^" at long point of mitre cuts) is nailed to 
top piece and upright at an angle of about 45 degrees. 

Upright rests on a base measuring 3'-0". This is mortised together and 
braced with 2" x 3" material about 20" long, set at an angle of about 
60 degrees. 

Unless there are facilities for bracing at the top, as shown in the cut, 
the upright should 'be made longer and buried about 3' in the ground. 

The swinging rope (%" dia.) passes through a hole bored in the top 
piece and held in place by a knot. Successive knots tied 8" to 9" 
apart and a big knot at the bottom make swinging easier for little 
folks. 

10 




THE TRAPEZE 

Two Uprights— 3" x 3" x 6'-10". 

Top Piece— 3" x 3" x 2'-10". 

Ends of top piece secured to uprights by being mortised or halved and 
bolted together. 

Uprights rest on bases of 2" x 3" material, Z'-l" long, connected by a 
small platform in the form of an H. 

Bases andl uprights are bolted to dogs or pieces of wood 2" x 4" x 5'-8" 
set in the ground about 3'-0". 

Adjustable bar (round) 1^" dia. 

3 holes bored in each upright provide for the adjustable bar. The first 
hole is 3'-0" above ground, the second 3'-5", the third 3'-10". 

Swing bar (round), l^" dia., is 20" long. Should hang about 16" 
below top piece. 

2 holes Y&" dia. ibored in the top piece receive a continuous rope attached 
to the swing bar by being knotted after passing through holes 
(J>/%" dia.) in each endi of the bar. 

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14 




THE SAND BOX 

The sloping cover to the sand box pictured here has been found to 
have many uses besides its obvious purpose of protection against stray 
animals and dirt. It is a fairly good substitute for the old-time cellar 
door, that most important dramatic property of a play era past or rapidly 
passing. 




15 




BOX VILLAGE 

The child is to be pitied who has not at some time revelled in a 
packing-box house big enough to get into and furnished by his own 
efforts. But a "village" of such houses offers a greatly enlarged field 
of play opportunity and has been the basis of Miss Mary Rankin's ex- 
periment on the Teachers College Playground.* 

In addition to its more obvious possibilities for constructive and 
manual development, Miss Rankin's experiment offers social features 



*See "Teachers College Pla}'ground," Bulletin No. 4, 
cational Experiments. 



Bureau of Edu- 



16 




Of interest to carpenters 

of unusual suggestiveness, for the village provides a civic experience 
fairly comprehensive and free from the artificiality that is apt to char- 
acterize attempts to introduce civic content into school and play 
procedure. 




A boom in real estate 

17 



INDOOK EQUIPMENT 



1* 



HE requisites for indoor equipment are these: 

A Suitable Floor — The natural place for a little child to play 
is the floor and it is therefore the sine qua non of the play 
laboratory. 

Places to Keep Things — A maximum of convenience to facili- 
tate habits of order. 

Tables and Chairs — For use as occasion demands, to supple- 
ment the floor, not to take the place of it. 

Blocks and Toys — For initial play material. 

The Carpenter's Bench — With tools and lumber for the manu- 
facture of supplementary toys. 

A supply of Art and Craft materials — For the same purpose. 



19 



The Indoor Laboratory 

The floor should receive first consideration in planning the indoor 
laboratory. It should be as spacious as circumstances will permit and 
safe, that is to say clean and protected from draughts and dampness. 

A well-kept hardwood floor is the best that can be provided. In- 
dividual light rugs or felt mats can be used for the younger children 
to sit on in cold weather if any doubt exists as to the adequacy of heat- 
ing facilities (see cut, p. 32). 

Battleship linoleum makes a good substitute for a hardwood finish. 
It comes in solid colors and can be kept immaculate. 

Deck canvas stretched over a layer of carpet felt and painted makes 
a warm covering, especially well adapted to the needs of very little chil- 
dren, as it has some of the softness of a carpet and yet can be scrubbed 
and mopped. 

Second only in importance is the supply of lockers, shelves, boxes 
and drawers for the disposal of the great number and variety of small 
articles that make up the "tools and appliances" of- the laboratory. The 
cut on page 24 shows a particularly successful arrangement for facilities 
of this kind. 

The chairs shown are the Mosher kindergarten chairs, which come 
in three sizes. The light tables can be folded by the children and put 
away in the biggest cupboard space (p. 24). 

Block boxes are an essential part of the equipment. Their dimen- 
sions should be planned in relation to the unit block of the set used. 
Those shown are 13^4" x 16^" x 44" (inside measurements) for use 
with a set having a unit 1^" x 2^4" x 5y 2 " '. They are on castors and 
can be rolled to any part of the room. 

The low blackboards are 5'-5" in height and 2'-0" from the floor. 

All the furnishings of the laboratory should lend themselves to use 
as dramatic properties when occasion demands, and a few may be kept 
for such purposes alone. The light screens in the right-hand corner of 
the room are properties of this kind and are put to an endless number 
of uses (see cut, p. 40). 



21 




The balcony and a low ceiling 



The balcony is a device to increase floor space that has been used 
successfully in The Play School for several years. It is very popular 
with the children and contributes effectively to many play schemes. The 
tall block construction representing an elevator shaft shown in the pic- 
ture opposite would never have reached its "Singer Tower proportions" 
without the balcony, first to suggest the project and then to aid in its 
execution. 

Drop shelves like those along the wall of the "gallery" (p. 22) 
can be used for some purposes instead of tables when space is limited. 

Materials for store-keeping play nils the shelves next the fireplace, 
and the big crock on the hearth contains modelling clay, the raw ma- 
terial of such objets d'art as may be seen decorating the mantlepiece in 
the cut on page 20. 

23 




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THE INDOOR SAND BOX 

The indoor Sand Box pictured here was designed by Mrs. Hutchin- 
son for use in the nursery at Stony Ford. A box of this kind is ideal 
for the enclosed porch or terrace and a great resource in rainy weather. 

The usual kindergarten sand table cannot provide the same play 
opportunity that is afforded by a floor box, but it presents fewer prob- 
lems to the housekeeper and is always a valuable adjunct to indoor 
equipment. 



25 




THE CARPENTER BENCH 

The carpenter equipment must be a "sure-enough business affair," 
and the tools real tools — not toys. 

The Sheldon bench shown here is a real bench in every particular 
except size. The tool list is as follows: 

Manual training hammer. 

18 point cross-cut saw. 

9 point rip saw. 

Large screw driver, wooden handle. 

Small screw driver. 

Nail puller. 

Stanley smooth-plane, No. 3. 

Bench hook. 

Brace and set of twist bits. 

Manual training rule. 

Steel rule. 

Tri square. 

Utility box — with assorted nails, screws, etc. 

Combination India oil stone. 

Oil can. 

Small hatchet. 



26 



Choice of lumber must be determined partly by the viewpoint of the 
adult concerned, largely by the laboratory budget, and finally by the 
supply locally available. Excellent results have sometimes been achieved 
where only boxes from the grocery and left-over pieces from the car- 
penter shop have been provided. Such rough lumber affords good ex- 
perience in manipulation, and its use may help to establish habits of 
adapting materials as we find them to the purposes we have in hand. 
This is the natural attack of childhood, and it should be fostered, for 
children can lose it and come to feel that specially prepared materials are 
essential, and a consequent limitation to ingenuity and initiative can 
thus be established. 

On the other hand, some projects and certain stages of experience 
are best served by a supply of good regulation stock. Boards of soft 
pine, white wood, bass wood, or cypress in thicknesses of J4", Y^\ T A" 
and Y§ are especially well adapted for children's work, and "stock 
strips" y^" and j£" thick and 2" and 3" wide lend themselves to many 
purposes. 




TOYS 



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HE proper basis of selection for toys is their efficiency as toys, 
that is : 

They must be suggestive of play and made for play. 

They should be selected in relation to each other. 

They should be consistent with the environment of the child 
who is to use them. 

They should be constructed simply so that they may serve as 
models for other toys to be constructed by the children. 

They should suggest something besides domestic play so that 
the child's interest may be led to activities outside the home life. 

They should be durable because they are the realities of a 
child's world and deserve the dignity of good workmanship. 



29 




FLOOR GAMES 

"There comes back to me the memory of an enormous room with its 
ceiling going up to heaven, . . . It is the floor I think of chiefly, over 
the oilcloth of which, assumed to he land, spread towns and villages and 
forts of wooden bricks . . . the cracks and spaces of the floor and the 
bare brown "surround" were the water channels and open sea of that con- 
tinent of mine. . . . 

"Justice has never been done to bricks and soldiers by those who write 
about toys — my bricks and my soldiers were my perpetual drama. I recall 
an incessant variety of interests. There was the mystery and charm of 
the complicated buildings one could make, with long passages and steps 
and windows through which one could peep into their intricacies, and by 
means of slips of card one could make slanting ways in them, and send 
marbles rolling from top to base and thence out into the hold of a wait- 
ing ship. . . . And there was commerce; the shops and markets and 
storerooms full of nasturtium seed, thrift seed, lupin beans and such- 
like provender from the garden; such stuff one stored in match boxes and 
pill boxes or packed in sacks of old glove fingers tied up with thread and 
sent off by wagons along the great military road to the beleaguered fortress 
on the Indian frontier beyond the worn places that were dismal swamps. 

"I find this empire of the floor much more vivid in my memory now 
than many of the owners of the skirts and legs and boots that went gin- 
gerly across its territories." 

H. G. Wells, "The New Machiavelli," Chapter 2. 

31 




The unsocial novice 

Nowhere else, perhaps, not even in his "Floor Games" and "Little 
Wars" has Mr. Wells, or any other author succeeded in drawing so 
convincing a picture of the possibilities of constructive play as is to be 
found in those pages, all too brief, in "The New Machiavelli" where 
the play laboratory at Bromstead is described. One can imagine the 
eager boy who played there looking back across the years strong in the 
conviction that it could not have been improved, and yet the picture of 
a child at solitary play is not, after all, the ideal picture. Our labora- 
tory, while it must accommodate the unsocial novice and make pro- 
vision for individual enterprise at all ages and stages, must be above 
all the place where the give and take of group play will develop along 
with block villages and other community life in miniature. 

FLOOR BLOCKS 



In his reminiscences of his boyhood play Mr. Wells lays emphasis 
on his great good fortune in possessing a special set of "bricks" made 
to order and therefore sufficient in number for the ambitious floor games 
he describes. Comparatively few adults can look back to the posses- 
sion of similar play material, and so a majority cannot realize how it 
outweighs in value every other type of toy that can be provided. 

Where the budget for equipment is limited, floor blocks can be 
cut by the local carpenter or, in a school, by the manual training 
department. The blocks in use at The Play School (see cut, p. 20) 
are of white wood, the unit block being l^/g" x 2j/\." x Sy 2 " . They 
range in size from half units and diagonals to blocks four times the unit 
in length (22"). 

32 





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The Hill Floor Blocks at the Gregory Avenue School 

At present there is but one set of blocks on the market that cor- 
responds to the one Mr. Wells describes. These are the "Hill Floor 
Blocks" manufactured and sold by A. Schoenhut & Co., of Philadel- 
phia. They are of hard maple and come in seven sizes, from 3" squares 
to oblongs of 24", the unit block being 6" in length. There are 680 
pieces in a set. Half and quarter sets are also obtainable. They are 
the invention of Professor Patty Smith Hill of Teachers College, 
Columbia University, and are used in The Teachers College Kinder- 
garten and in many other schools. 





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Useful alike to builders and cabinet makers 

33 




Advanced research in Peg-Lock construction 



The School of Childhood at the University of Pittsburgh makes 
use of several varieties of blocks, some of commercial manufacture, 
others cut to order. The list given is as follows : * 

A. Nest of blocks. 

B. Large blocks made to order of hard maple in five sizes : 

Cubes, 5" x 5". 

Oblongs, Zy-z" x 5" x 10". 

Triangular prisms made by cutting cube diagonally into two and 

four parts. 
Pillars made by cutting oblongs into two parts. 
Plinths made by cutting oblongs into two parts. 
Light weight 12" boards, 3'-0" to 7'-0" long. 

C. Froebel's enlarged fifth and sixth gifts. 

D. Stone Anchor blocks. 

E. Architectural blocks for flat forms. 

F. Peg-Look blocks. 

As children become more dexterous and more ambitious in their 
block construction, the Peg-Lock Blocks will be found increasingly 
valuable. These are a type of block unknown to Mr. Wells, but how 
he would have revelled in the possession of a set! They are manufac- 
tured by the Peg-Lock Block Co. of New York. Cut on a smaller 
scale than the other blocks described, they are equipped with holes and 
pegs, by which they may be securely joined. This admits of a type of 
construction entirely outside the possibilities of other blocks. They 
come in sets of varying sizes and in a great variety of shapes. The 
School of Childhood uses them extensively, as does The Play School. 



*See Universitv of Pittsburgh Bulletin, "Report of the Experimental 
Work in the School of Childhood." 

34 







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FLOOR TOYS 

The "Do-with Toys" shown in the accompanying cuts were de- 
signed by Miss Caroline Pratt some years ago to meet the need 
generally felt by devotees of the play laboratory of a consistent series 
of toys to be used with floor blocks. For if the market of the present 
day can offer something more adequate in the way of blocks than 
was generally available in Mr. Wells' boyhood, the same is not true 
when it comes to facilities for peopling and stocking the resulting farms 
and communities that develope. 

Mr. Wells tells us that for his floor games he used tin soldiers 
and such animals as he could get — we know the kind, the lion smaller 
than the lamb, and barnyard fowl doubtless overtopping the com- 
manding officer. Such combinations have been known to children of 
all generations and play of the kind Mr. Wells describes goes on in spite 
of the inconsistency of the materials supplied. 

But when we consider fostering such play, and developing its 
possibilities for educational ends, the question arises whether this is 




35 



the best provision that can be 
made, or if the traditional material 
could be improved, just as the tradi- 
tions concerning blocks are being 
improved. 

A few pioneers have been ex- 
perimenting in this field for some 
years past. No one of them is 





ready with final conclusions but among 
them opinion is unanimous that con- 
structive play is stimulated by an initial 
supply of consistent play material cal- 
culated to suggest supplementary play 
material of a kind children can manu- 
facture for themselves. 

Blocks are of course the most im- 



portant type of initial 
material to be pro- 
vided ; beyond this 
the generally accepted 
hypothesis is e m - 
bodied in the "Do- 
with" series which 
provides, first a doll 
family of proportions 
suited to block houses, 
then a set of farm ani- 





mals and carts, then a set of wild ani- 
mals, all designed on the same size scale, 
of construction simple enough to be 
copied at the bench, and suggesting, each 
set after its kind, a host of supplemen- 
tary toys, limited in variety and in num- 
bers only by the experience of the child 
concerned and by his ability to construct 
them. 
36 



This working hy- 
pothesis for the selec- 
tion of toys is as yet 
but little understood 
either by those who buy 
or those who sell play 
materials. The com- 
mercial dealer declares 
with truth that there 





is too little demand to justify 
placing such a series on the 
market. Not only does he re- 
fuse to make "Do-withs" but 
he provides no adequate substi- 
tutes. His wooden toys are 
merely wooden ornaments with- 
out relation to any series and 
without playability, immobile, 
reasonless, for the philosophy 



of the play laboratory is quite 
unknown to the makers of play 
materials, while those who buy 
are guided almost entirely by 
convention and have no better 
standard by which to estimate 
what constitutes their money's 
worth. 

On the other hand enthusi- 
asts raise the question, why sup- 





ply any toys? Is it not better 
for children to make all their 
toys? And as Miss Pratt says, 
"getting ready for play is mis- 
taken for play itself." 

Too much "getting ready" 
kills real play, and if our pur- 



37 




A trunk line 



pose is to foster and enrich the actual activity, we must understand the 
subtle value of initial play materials, of having at hand ready for the 
promptings of play impulse the necessary foundation stones on which 
a superstructure of improvisation can be reared. 

When by hook or crook the devotees of floor games have secured 
a population and live stock for their block communities, then, as Mr. 
Wells reminds us, comes commerce and in her wake transportation 
problems to tax the inventive genius of the laboratory. 

Simple transportation toys are the next need, and suitable ones 
can generally, though not always, be obtained in the shops. A few 
well-chosen pieces for initial material will soon be supplemented by 
"Peg-lock" or bench-made contrivances. 

For railroad tracks the block supply offers possibilities better 
adapted to the ages we are considering than any of the elaborate rail 
systems that are sold with the high-priced mechanical toys so fascinat- 
ing to adult minds. Additional curved blocks corresponding to the unit 
block in width and thickness are a great boon to engineers, for what is 
a railroad without curves ! 

Transportation toys can be perfectly satisfactory when not made 
strictly to scale. Indeed, the exigencies of the situation generally de- 
mand that realists be satisfied with rather wide departures from the 
general rule. Train service, however, should accommodate at least one 
passenger to a car. 

39 




LARGE AND SMALL SCALE TOYS 



The floor scheme pictured here is a good illustration of our prin- 
ciples of selection applied to toys of larger scale. The dolls, the tea 
set, the chairs are from the toy shop. The little table in the fore- 
ground, and the bed are bench made. The bedding is of home manu- 
facture, the jardiniere too, is of modelling clay, gaily painted with water 
colors. The tea table and stove are improvised from blocks as is the 
bath room, through the door of which a block "tub" may be seen. The 
screen used as a partition at the back is one of the Play School "proper- 
ties" with large sheets of paper as panels. (See cut p. 20.) 

There are some important differences, however, between the 
content of a play scheme like this and one of the kind we have been 
considering (see cut page 30). These result from the size and char- 
acter of the initial play material, for dolls like these invite an entirely 
different type of treatment. One cannot build villages, or provide ex- 
tensive railroad facilities for them, nor does one regard them in the 
impersonal way that the "Do-with" family, or Mr. Wells' soldiers, are 
regarded, as incidentals in a general scheme of things. 

These beings hold the centre of their little stage. They call for 
affection and solicitude, and the kind of play into which they fit is more 
limited in scope, less stirring to the imagination, but more usual in the 

40 









i^^B- 


i «ijBBp 


0^ 



A "Furnished Apartment" at the Ethical Culture School 

experience of children, because play material of this type is more plenti- 
fully provided than is any other and, centering attention as it does on 
the furnishings and utensils of the home, requires less contact with or 
information about, the world outside and its activities to provide the 
mental content for interesting play. 

In the epochs of play development interest in these larger scale 
toys precedes that in more complicated schemes with smaller ones. Mr. 
Wells' stress on the desirability of a toy soldier population really re- 
flects an adult view. For play on the toy soldier and paper doll scale 
develops latest of all, and because of the opportunities it affords for 
schemes of correspondingly greater mental content makes special appeal 
to the adult imagination. 

Play material smaller than the "Do-with" models and better 
adapted to this latest period than are either soldiers or paper dolls 
remains one of the unexplored possibilities for the toy trade of the 
future. 




Supplementary 
41 




HOUSEKEEPING PLAY 

Materials for housekeeping play are of two general kinds, according 
to size — those intended for the convenience of dolls, and those of larger 
scale for children's use. The larger kind should be strong enough and 
well enough made to permit of actual processes. 

Plentiful as such materials are in the shops, it is difficult to assemble 
anything approaching a complete outfit on the same size scale. One 
may spend days in the attempt to get together one as satisfactory as 
that pictured here. The reason seems to be that for considerations of 
trade such toys are made and sold in sets of a few pieces each. If 
dealers would go a step further and plan their sets in series, made to 
scale and supplementing each other, they would better serve the re- 
quirements of play, and, it would seem, their own interests as well. 

STOREKEEPING PLAY 



From housekeeping play to storekeeping play is a logical step and 
one abounding in possibilities for leading interest beyond the horizon 
line of home environment. 

Better than any toy equipment and within reach of every house- 
hold budget is a "store" like the one pictured here where real cartons, 
boxes, tins and jars are used. 

42 




A "Grocery Store" at the Ethical Culture School 

Schools can often obtain new unfilled cartons from manufacturers. 
The Fels-Naphtha and National Biscuit companies are especially cordial 
to requests of this kind, and cartons from the latter firm are good for 
beginners, as prices are plainly marked and involve only dime and nickel 
computation. The magazine ''Educational Foundations" maintains a 
department which collects such equipment and furnishes it to public 
schools on their subscribers' list. 

Sample packages add to interest and a small supply of actual staples 
in bulk, or of sand, sawdust, chaff, etc., for weighing and measuring 
should be provided as well as paper, string, and paper bags of assorted 
sizes. 

Small scales, and inexpensive sets of standard measures, dry and 
liquid, can be obtained of Milton Bradley and other school supply 
houses. A toy telephone and toy money will add "content," and for 
older children a "price and sign marker" (Milton Bradley) is a valuable 
addition. 



43 



The School of Childhood (Pittsburgh) list includes the following 
miscellaneous articles for house and store play: 

spoons bells 

various sized boxes enlarged sticks of the kindergarten 

stones ribbon bolts filled with sand 

pebbles rice 

buttons shot 

shells bottles, etc. 

spools 



CRAFT AND COLOR MATERIALS 

Materials of this kind are a valuable part of any play equipment. 
Of the large assortment carried by kindergarten and school supply 
houses the following are best adapted to the needs of the play laboratory : 

Modelling Materials — Modelling clay and plasticine, far from being 
the same, are supplementary materials, each adapted to uses for which 
the other is unsuited. 

Weaving Materials — Raphia, basketry reed, colored worsteds, cotton 
roving, jute and macrame cord can be used for many purposes. 

Material for Paper Work — Heavy oak tag, manila, and bogus papers 
for cutting and construction come in sheets of different sizes. Colored 
papers, both coated (colored on one side) and engine colored (colored 
on both sides) are better adapted to "laboratory purposes" when obtain- 
able in large sheets instead of the regulation kindergarten squares. Col- 
ored tissue papers, scissors and library paste are always in demand. 

Color Materials — Crayons, water color paints, chalks (for black- 
board use) are best adapted to the needs of play when supplied in a 
variety of colors and shades. For drawing and painting coarse paper 
should be furnished in quantity and in sheets of differing sizes. 

"If children are let alone with paper and crayons they will quickly 
learn to use these toys quite as effectively as they do blocks and dolls." 



44 



1 r 


► 


^f 


''" 


; 




.. 














- • . .. 


- - 





TOYS FOR ACTIVE PLAY AND OUTDOOR TOOLS 

Among the many desirable toys for active play the following de- 
serve ''honorable mention": 



Football (small size Association 

ball) 
Indoor baseball 
Rubber balls (various sizes) 
Bean bags 
Steamer quoits 



Express wagon 

Sled 

Horse reins 

"Coaster" or "Scooter" 

Velocipede (and other adapta- 
tions of the bicycle for be- 
ginners) 

As in the case of the carpenter's bench it is poor economy to supply 
any but good tools for the yard and garden. Even the best garden sets 
for children are so far inferior to those made for adults as to render 
them unsatisfactory and expensive by comparison. It is therefore better 
to get light weight pieces in the smaller standard sizes and cut down 
long wooden handles for greater convenience. The one exception to 
be noted is the boy's shovel supplied by the Peter Henderson company. 
This is in every respect as strong and well made as the regulation sizes 
and a complete series to the same scale and of the same standard would 
meet a decided need in children's equipment where light weight is 
imperative and hard wear unavoidable. 

In addition to the garden set of shovel, rake, hoe, trowel and wheel- 
barrow, a small crow-bar is useful about the yard and, in winter, a 
light snow shovel is an advantage. 

Jean Lee Hunt. 
45 






A small permanent exhibit of the play equipment described mav 
be seen at the Bureau of Educational Experiments, 16 West 8th Street, 
New York, and is occasionally loaned. 



46 



Suggested Reading 

For convenience it has seemed well to divide the following list 
into two parts — the first devoted to the discussion of theory, the other 
offering concrete suggestions. 

Such a division is arbitrary, of course. No better exposition of 
theory can be found than is contained in some of these references dealing 
with actual laboratory usage and furnishings. On the other hand the 
two books by Dr. Kilpatrick, with their illuminating analysis of didactic 
materials, afford many concrete suggestions, at least on the negative side. 

PART I. 
Chamberlain, A. E. 

"The Child: A Study in the Evolution of Man," Scribner, 1917. 
Chap. I, "The Meaning of the Helplessness of Infancy." 
Chap. II, "The Meaning of Youth and Play." 
Chap. IV, "The Periods of Childhood." 

Dewey, John 

"Democracy and Education," Macmillan, 1916. 

Chap. XV, "Play and Work in the Curriculum." 
"How We Think," D. C. Heath and Co. 

Chap. XVII, "Play, Work, and Allied Forms of Activity." 

Chap. XVI, "Process and Product." 
"Interest and Effort in Education," Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913. 

Chap. IV, "The Psychology of Occupations." 
"The School and Society," University of Chicago Press, 1916. 

Chap. IV, "The Psychology of Occupations." 

Chap. VII, "The Development of Attention." 
"Cyclopedia of Education," Edited by Paul Monroe, Macmillan Co. 

Articles on "Infancy," "Play." 

Dopp, Katherine E. 

"The Place of Industries in Elementary Education," University of 
Chicago Press, 1915. 
Groos, Karl 

"The Play of Man," Appleton, 1916. 

Hall, G. Stanley 

"Educational Problems," Appleton, 1911. 

Chap. I, "The Pedagogy of the Kindergarten." 
"Youth: Its Regimen and Hygiene," Appleton, 1916. 
Chap. VI, "Play, Sports and Games." 

Kilpatrick, William Heard 

"The Montessori System Examined," Houghton Mifflin, 1914. 
"Froebel's Kindergarten Principles Critically Examined," Mac- 
millan, 1916. 

47 



Lee, Joseph 

"Play in Education," Macmillan, 1915. 
Wood, Walter 

"Children's Play and Its Place in Education," Duffield, 1913. 

PART II. 
Arnold, Dr. E. H. 

"Some Inexpensive Playground Apparatus," Bulletin No. 27, Play- 
ground Association of America and Playground Extension 
Committee of The Russell Sage Foundation. 

Deming, Lucile P. and others 
"Playthings," Bulletin No. I. 
"The Play School," Bulletin No. III. 

"The Children's School, The Teachers College Playground, The 
Gregory School," Bulletin No. IV. 
Bureau of Educational Experiments publications, 1917. 

Chambers, Will Grant and others 

"Report of the Experimental Work in the School of Childhood," 
University of Pittsburgh Bulletin, 1916. 
Cook, H. Caldwell 

"The Play Way," Stokes Co., 1917. 
Corbin, Alice M. 

"How to Equip a Playroom: the Pittsburgh Plan," Bulletin No. 118, 
Playground and Recreation Association of America, 1913. 
Dewey, John and Evelyn 

"Schools of To-morrow," Dutton, 1915. 
Chap. V, "Play." 
Hall, G. Stanley 

"Aspects of Child Life," Ginn, 1914. 
"The Story of a Sand Pile." 
Hetherington, Clark W. 

"The Demonstration Play School of 1913," University of Cali- 
fornia Bulletin, 1914. 
Hill, Patty Smith and others 

"Experimental Studies in Kindergarten Education," Teachers Col- 
lege publications, 1915. 
Johnson, George E. 

"Education by Plays and Games," Ginn & Co., 1907. 
Lee, Joseph 

"Play for Home," Bulletin No. 102, Playground and Recreation 
Association of America. 
Read, Mary L. 

"The Mothercraft Manual," Little, Brown & Co., 1916. 
Wells, H. G. 

"Floor Games," Small, Maynard & Co.. 1912. 
"The New Machiavelli," Duffield Co., 1910. 
Chap. II, "Bromstead and My Father." 



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